For all the talk of the negotiations between Team May and Team Corbyn being "constructive and serious", Labour's leader always seemed somehow more likely to back away from a Brexit compromise with the prime minister than embrace one.

Some of his Labour critics still suspect - though he and his close aides deny it - that he's a lifelong Eurosceptic who would be content with a Brexit that also taints the Conservatives and takes him closer to power.

Unlike more hardline colleagues, the now former fisheries minister has actually been willing to contemplate a Brexit which leaves the UK quite close the European Union; a relationship with the EU comparable to Norway's, at least for a while.

They've agreed on a draft of an agreement, and this time Downing Street's ready to sell it to the Cabinet. Or at least try. The time for tinkering and bartering has run out.

So by the time ministers gather around the Cabinet table tomorrow (Wednesday), Theresa May will know whether there'll be empty seats - left by resigning Brexiteers - when the time comes to start selling the plan to the party and to Parliament.

Chancellor Philip Hammond will have known his Budget would be seized upon by Conservative colleagues and, as one put it to me, "shouted about, and plastered over leaflets that'll be pushed through thousands of letterboxes in marginal seats this weekend".

He can't have known it would split the Labour Party the wholly unexpected way it has.

About John

John started covering politics for the BBC in 1992 as a Political Correspondent and has worked on the full range of BBC news and current affairs programmes including the One, Six and Ten O'Clock News as well as the Today programme on Radio 4 before joining Radio 5live in 2002 as chief political correspondent and later presenter of Pienaar's Politics.

Now, as the BBC's Deputy Political Editor, John works alongside the BBC's Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg providing political coverage and analysis across BBC programmes, including the Six and Ten O'Clock News, and continues to report and discuss politics on BBC Radio 5live.

John Pienaar is married and has four children. He is a fanatical supporter of Crystal Palace football club. Pienaar's Politics broadcasts on Sunday mornings at 10am on BBC Radio 5live.